Sport in the Uranium Mines of Communist Czechoslovakia: Between Active Support for the Leisure Time Activities of Workers and Efforts ‘From Below’

The official newspaper of the Dolní Rožínka Uranium Mines contains many articles about sport. Sport appeared to be a regular part of life at the mines and an important component of state-socialist enterprise welfare policy. At first glance, it seems to be not only a working environment, but also a sporting one. Deeper insight into how organized sport developed and the meanings attributed to it by the enterprise and the workers reveals that it was the employees themselves who were largely responsible for building up sport activities and introducing sport to what had previously been an agricultural region. There was a certain link to the tradition of working-class sport that had emerged in Czechoslovakia during industrialization in the second half of the nineteenth century. The enterprise capitalized on the existence of worker-led sport to help meet the party-state’s policy goals related to worker welfare. Sport activities, however, primarily grew out of mining culture, which is reflected in their main attributes: collectivism, masculinity, and competitiveness. Examining the situation at one particular enterprise therefore contributes to the discussion of sport’s role in industrialization under state socialism.